Partner Communication in Swing Dancing

Series Summary

The Swing or Jazz Era in the United States made the music culture between the 1920's and 1940's a remarkable time for musicians, artists and party-goers. Along with jazz itself, swing dancing has withstood the test of time, encompassing a wide variety of influences and styles to remain one of the most enjoyable forms of dance. The essence of swing dancing is the inclusion of various forms of dance styles and music. Popular swing dance moves take their cue from jazz, Latin and traditional African dances.

In this video series, you will learn the basic beginning steps and swing dance moves, as well as partner communication techniques and the fundamentals of putting multiple steps together for a complete dance.

Video Transcript

"Hello! This is Ross on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip, we are going to introduce you to swing. This is six count swing or east coast swing. But before we begin, we need to identify that this is a partner dance, and to dance with a partner—and this is my partner Cindy—we need to be able to communicate with each other. And communication is done not through the mouth like hey, let’s move over here but through the arms and the body. You always want to move from your center of gravity as you move about. From there you connect it though with a frame and in this frame, you are holding your own arms. So I move my hands, her arms will stay there. What I am going to do to get feel of the frame, lean against your partner and then straighten up. As you push with your arms and you always feel this tension in your arms, but it is not tight like you are trying to grip something, but you are always responding to the tension. So if I push, she is going to maintain this distance and just let her feet move. Now since we have a connection, one of us has to be lead, one of us has to be follow. In this case I am going to be the leader, she will be the follower. That is the way we can have choreography on the floor and not run into other people. When I am holding the hands, I do not want to use the thumbs. I don’t necessarily want to be like a hitchhiker, but if you rest them down don’t squeeze, because if you are going through a turn we have to be able to disconnect. You don’t want ever to hold someone’s hand so they cannot let go. So we have like this magnet coupling that is going on. It works fingertip to fingertip, but we have tension in both of our arms. The follow could pretend that they are sitting or standing in this case on a dolly. The dolly has those wheels where it allows her to turn. She is now a statue. As a statue, if she is on wheels and if I pull her this way she will move. Now she has to move her feet though, because she has no wheels, and like a dolly would have, start and just keep moving until I stop her, and then hold her in the other direction. So, those are some of the lead follow practices that you can do with your partner."